Take us in Have us back again
by rustypolished
Summary: A good person, in the classical sense -  Tony Stark/Steve Rogers, slash


"Am I a bad person?" The mattress shifted and creaked as he sat up, slow and still half asleep.

"What kind of question is that? Of course not."

"I knew you'd say that, but that's not what I meant-" Steve gave him a quizzical look as he sat up as well, hard to see in the darkness of the room but pronounced all the same. Tony waved a hand dismissively and kept going, "Not literally. In the classical sense. You know, like the kind of people who exist in movies or poems or whatever. A good person."

"Are you asking me to write a poem about you?" Steve was trying and failing to not look just a little entertained at the prospect and that made Tony roll his eyes.

"You know what I mean-" He interrupted himself, shaking his head (a thing he did, Steve had noted a long time ago, when he was trying to gather his thoughts, like he was playing some kind of mental Yahtzee, rattling his brain in hopes to shake out just the right combination of facts and figures and words). "Like you. You're a good person. I don't mean that in the sense that you're a hero, or a soldier or whatever. You're the sort of person who could exist in any time or place and you'd still be the same. You could be one of Chaucer's knights or an adventurer in some Roman epic or a Shakespearian peasant and you'd still be _you,_" A quick scan of Steve's face, "I'm complimenting you here, the least you could do is not look at me like I'm speaking Greek."

"Thank you." Steve was very good at going from playful to earnest like it was as easy as flipping a switch (something Tony had always been just a little jealous of.) "But I still don't think I understand how any of that makes you any less good."

"What I'm saying is that my good is relative to my environment. If I didn't have the suit or the Arc Reactor or way too much expendable income, would I still do what I do? Hell, even with all those things in my corner, I can barely manage. I'm not timeless."

"No one is timeless."

"You are. That's what I mean. Literally, even."

"A freak accident that I had no say in hardly counts. You're as much a product of the times as I am. We all adapt." Tony watched him from across the mattress with his face drawn into very serious lines, accentuated by the shadows of the room. Outside, New York City ground on and on, safe for another night, thanks to them. Steve took a moment to think about the implications of every car horn, every far off siren, the way the city heaved and moved like some giant omnipresent beast, and the way they kept her going. He wondered if Tony really understood how important that was, and how monumental – There wasn't much, of course, that Tony didn't understand, but after so many years Steve had shed the illusion of Tony's genius being synonymous with common sense. It had been a difficult, but important pill to swallow. "We all do the very best we can."

"You have too much faith in me."

"Maybe you've never had enough."

Tony let out a laugh at that, something bitter and sharp that made Steve sigh and frown. "I hate it when you talk like that." Mostly he just hated having to realize that he'd gotten himself into an argument that he couldn't rightfully win. Debating something like morality with someone like Steve Rogers tended to be a futile effort at best. He knew that, but maybe one day he'd actually learn it. "When the day comes that I inevitably crack and become some nefarious megalomaniac in thirty billion dollar armor, promise me you'll take me down clean." A lame attempt at lightening the mood.

Steve mercifully allowed himself to smile and said: "Fine. But until that day how about you promise me that you'll stop trying to convince yourself that you're less than you are."

Checkmate. Tony let himself flop dramatically back against the mattress. "Yeah, yeah."

Warm kiss pressed to the corner of his mouth, warm arm wrapping around his midsection. "Good. Also, while we're making promises, how about you stop letting yourself get existential at ungodly hours of the night and save your philosophizing for the morning?"

"Don't push your luck."


End file.
